Some days ago, a friend told me about a project that are doing at her work, a New York based strategy agency with very high profile clients, of people holding papers in a picture with microaggressions written on it, and she invited me to participate.

And even though I don’t know yet if I will be part of the project, it brought me memories of something that happened to me 15 years ago, when I was about to get married for the first time.

Back then I lived in Monterrey, and the guy I was going to marry belonged to a family that considered itself as part of the very high class.

Respetable brides went to a house in San Pedro Garza García, one of the most affluent zipcodes of Mexico, where they had to choose the silver that the guests will give them as wedding present.

I don’t know if everywhere, but in upper-class Mexican weddings, silver has a special meaning that makes you fit in certain social strata. The most silverware sets you manage to receive, seems to be an indicator of the lineage and importance of the two families that bond together in that event.

Being an “outsider”, since my family lived in Chihuahua and not in Monterrey (San Pedro, to be more precise), city in which I went to university, I graduated and started working, that initiation rite to the San Pedro society had to be done with my then fiancé’s mother.

I have to say that visiting this place was a whole experience. There we saw some of the most popular brides to be of the season, which parties were chronicled by the newspaper in which I used to work. A profession not that well seen for a decent upper-class young woman.

There we happened to meet an acquantaince of my then future mother in law, who wanted to know who I was.

“Don’t tell me that she is your daughter in law!”, she said to her and in a matter of seconds was looking at me asking “Who are your parents?”.

Since I don’t have any relevant last name or ancestors for this northern and conservative city’s society, my future mother in law answered very quickly, before I made an unforgivable faux pas.

“Her parents don’t live here”, she said kind of apologetic.

It was then when the distinguished lady, in an acrobatic act, trying to save the (akward?) moment just could say…

“Who cares, my dear, you are very cute!”

In that very moment, more that consider it a micro (or macro?) agression, I found it very funny and went the next day to tell my friends at the newspaper, who —by the way— were also very far from those social espheres.

After that, every time I forgot something, made a mistake or just said something silly, one of my coworker friends would say as a joke.

“Don’t worry, my dear, you are very cute!”

Agression, joke or the sad Mexican reality… who cares if you are very cute?